The most fundamental of space physics is that in a vacuum a moving object will not change it's velocity or direction unless acted upon by an external force or internal thruster.

so the inertial dampener system apples retro thrust to bring a ship to a stop when the directional thruster is released. if this is turned off the ship will remain at it's current velocity or at least that is how physics is supposed to work.

currently there are several issues you encounter when the IDS is turned off.

1: the ship will still continue to consume fuel despite not generating thrust2: a ship on afterburner will decelerate automatically to its default max speed with no reverse thrust applied3: Turning off the IDS seems to have the intended function of operating with your engine turned off but maintaining the ability to generate thrust. since momentum is perfectly preserved and fuel consumption is halted when the engine is turned off i am assuming that the IDS problem is unintended

But there is a well know limit between fiction and realty... for most of the people and even if you wanted to, the "unlimited speed" isn't reachable, cause you can't pass above the light speed due to the propulsion method.In normal space (relative physic) the amount of trust to reach an higher speed grow exponentially with the current speed, So it could be easy to set the maximal speed in-game by, example, the trust time.Normal trust reach an inferior maximum speed respectively, and in realty you'll have hard time to see the difference as the gain of speed is logarithmic. Sorry for the quick show, it's just to explain my vision of the problem.

But the main point is the dampener, who should not make the ship slow down in the "empty space"I can understand that the space physic can be difficult to fit in a game, and even more difficult for lambda player to handle...

Hi Mike, yeah you are right. This feature of IDS (slowing down when afterburner is not used) was not intended and it must be some new bug.I personally prefer turning off my engine instead of IDS, so I have missed this bug.

Right now we are in a large re-design of the whole game and its systems, so new version would work differently. But that's a long-term plan.

on a side note cockpit shake also continues once thrust is cut via turning off engine

@evtmine

yes and no to be honest if you do allow infinite speed it would actually make combat both easier and harder rather than simply just breaking the game.

take for example the game "Evochron Mercenary" that game doesn't even have a max speed factor only factors of acceleration. it has some of the most difficult combat in any simulator but at the same time the IDS system can be toggled making maneuvering suited to the play style of the pilot.

so lets say you reach ludicrous speed and want to straif a target. first of all it will take several minutes to reach that speed and when you want to turn around it will take double the time to go back because lets say you accelerated for 5 minutes your ship would need 5 minutes of continuous thrust to slow down and another 5 to get back up to speed after turning around.

so traveling at that speed you would basically get a free shot at your target and turrets would not be able to track you effectivly however you have to not miss or end up wasting a lot of time.

personally i could see this working quite nicely with a sniper rigged ship in Miner Wars. I have a quad rifle rig that can one shot a mother ship generator so this would allow a kill without worrying about missiles or turrets.

an another note perhaps you could also take relative velocity into account when calculating damage. if a ship is moving at high speed towards you and you shoot it it would take more damage than if the ship was flying away from you as the force of the rounds impact would change with the velocity at which it hits with the exception of explosive ammo which would always do at least it's base explosion damage